Heart Courageous
by LittleMender
Summary: Tag to 4x12 My Bloody Valentine. She scoffed at his continued assurances that he wanted to protect her and consistently rebuffed his suggestions of deniability, but he hoped that when they came to the end she would realize he had kept his promises.


**For some reason, I feel the episodes of late are unfinished without some final interaction between Jane and Lisbon—even if it's just in their heads. I guess I'm looking for resolution. And although the writers aren't giving us much fodder for fluff, I think there are golden moments in their friendship to be found. This isn't exactly a happy tag, but I hope you can see the care and affection that I see in spite of what looks like darker times ahead. And no, the title isn't a typo.**

HEART COURAGEOUS

He _felt _Grace leave more than heard her, refusing to look over his shoulder as she passed the break room doorway lest he catch her eye. Their conversation hadn't exactly unnerved him, hadn't even made him uncomfortable. In fact, he'd been pleased that she had come to him, given their history on discussions of that sort. He was certain that after a long period of refusing to deal honestly with the trauma of shooting her fiancé to death a sudden jolt of extreme stress had forced certain things to the forefront of her psyche, taking the form of Craig O'Laughlin temporarily back from the dead, her subconscious using his voice to allow her mind to reorient and clarify. All perfectly understandable and easily explained. Still, he wasn't about to tell anyone that Grace had achieved a measure of peace talking to her deceased and treacherous lover while on a jaunt in the woods with a murderous hooker.

And while he did take pleasure in her trusting him as a confidante, he hadn't wanted the conversation to go any further. Deciding that it was best for both of them for him to act as an nonjudgmental sounding board and leave the ball firmly in her court, he had abstractly conveyed his faith in her ability to come to the right conclusion. Then he had beat it the hell out of there in search of tea.

As was often the case with Jane, he experienced a dichotomy of feeling on what had happened: _relief_ that she was gone for the evening and that the subject would most probably never come up again and _self-satisfaction_ in knowing that while he offered her only minimum counsel, he had indeed been of help. Buoyed by both, he took his tea and went in search of company.

"Still here?" Lisbon asked nonchalantly as he took a seat on her couch. He blew softly across the top of his tea, eyelids drooping as he looked down to watch the gentle rippling, smiling to himself. She was getting better. The tone was almost perfect, although there was still that barely detectable hitch as her inflection lifted at the end. The error was in her choice of inquiry. Lisbon always asked silly, inane questions when there was something she wanted to talk about as well as when there was something that needed talking about that she wanted to avoid.

"Yup." He took a sip, deciding not to give her any help, waiting to see what subject she would broach, and—truthfully—relishing her squirming a bit. He registered movement in his peripheral vision and knew she had turned her head away from him just slightly. If he looked at her, he would see her eyes narrowed at him, looking for some sign or tell, wondering if he was playing with her and how hard he was going to make it for her to get anything out of him.

"Grace okay?" she asked. Ah. She had seen them talking. He was surprised she had gotten to the actual subject so quickly. He took that as evidence of her level of concern for her team member and friend and decided not to draw the game out. Well. Maybe just one more play.

"Sure." _Another sip_.

She harrumphed impatiently and softly drummed the fingers of her right hand on the desktop twice. _Pause_. "I saw you talking. She was holding the necklace."

Well now she was just _giving_ it away.

"We were talking about what she should do with it." _Slurp_.

She slowly inhaled a deep breath and let it out through her nose. _Drum, drum_.

"Well . . . what did you tell her?"

_Raise cup and hesitate_. "I told her it was up to her and let her know I was sure she would make the right decision."

_Drum, drum, silence_. Wait for it.

"Well . . . that was . . . smart."

He was getting ready to take another deeper drink, but her choice of word pulled his gaze to hers forcibly. "As opposed to when I say things that are _stupid_?" he asked incredulously.

She grinned slow and lazy. "_Wise_. It was wise."

He expelled his own harrumph as if to say "That's better" and returned his attention to his tea.

"As opposed to when you're full of foolish nonsense."

His eyes shot back to hers, a sharp retort on his tongue. But her smile of triumph belayed the snipe—she had smiled so little these past two days. He knew, even though he hadn't been with her most of the time. _Slow, thoughtful sip_.

"You know, if you're going to keep this up you could wear a collar."

"Hm?" he asked on a swallow and squint-smiled at her in confusion. She motioned at her throat immediately above her cross. She couldn't mean what he thought she did.

"All of this comforting and counseling you've been offering lately. Not to mention the advice you give Rigsby and Cho on a near daily basis."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," he said in mock stiffness. She was, after all, just teasing.

"When was the last time you charged them? Even a dollar? And I'll bet you heard the closest thing to Porchetto's last confession he'll ever offer up."

Her mood had lightened considerably so he decided to play along, knowing instinctively that now wasn't the time to make _his_ confession that in his past life he'd been there and done that.

"Maybe you're right. I'd make quite a romantic figure—"

"That's not what I—"

"Women are always turned on by that kind of thing. The tragic figure-turned-priest. Untouchable, un_have_-able—"

"I wasn't really—"

"And imagine what people would tell me, witnesses and suspects alike, believing it was all confidential."

"Enough! I'm sorry I suggested it."

He chuckled into his cup, taking another drink. Really. Where did she _think_ he was going to go with that?

"My point is that you care."

"Hm? About what?" He choked a little that time.

"Us. You care about us. You tried to comfort me when I was worried,—"

"I was trying to get your mind back on the case."

"—You leaned on the suspects and took a chance because you thought that would help us find Grace faster—"

"I wanted to catch the killer. Remember? That's what we do here?"

"—Because you were worried about her. Just like the rest of us."

He was silent, mulling, his cup hovering over the saucer, eyes trained on some spot across the room. She knew she had made him uncomfortable, and while it had been her plan to get a little payback as well as try to get him to admit what she knew was the truth, she was suddenly worried that his natural contrariness would make him want to push away from them, create distance again. She dropped the teasing and turned sincere.

"I know _you_ knew you would catch whoever murdured Porchetto Junior, that you were counting on Grace's ability to handle herself in a difficult situation. But—" she shrugged, "—you were worried, just the same. Didn't want anything to happen to her."

"_Concerned_," he said motioning his cup sideways at her, eyes still trained on that spot. "I was _concerned_. Grace has taken a while to train up in spite of her naturally compliant temperament. It would be very inconvenient at this point to break someone new in."

She had that smug look again. "Concerned," she mocked.

"Mm." He took another swallow. Lisbon grew quiet, and he turned to look at her to see if he could gauge where her mind had wandered. She was looking down at the papers spread across her desktop, her face openly woebegone and pensive, and he knew she was remembering her own recent worry. It was probably best if he just left her to her thoughts. Her eyes skittered back and forth across the forms and reports, and he sighed to himself.

"Those will all still be there in the morning."

"Yeah. Along with another day's worth."

"You've had a long two days, Lisbon, and you didn't go home at all last night. Go home. Get a good night's sleep. Come back and attack that tomorrow."

She sucked her bottom lip in, making her cheekbones look sharper and the dark circles under her eyes more pronounced. When she palmed the edge of her desk and pushed her chair back, he thought she might actually be following his advice. Instead, she leaned forward, elbows on knees and dropped her face into her upturned hands, forehead just shy of the desktop. He was struck with wondering something he hadn't thought of in what seemed now to have been a very long time.

Just how much could Lisbon bear?

He took another sip of tea and his eyes drifted back to that spot as he pondered the question. In the nearly eight years he had worked with her, she had been questioned, second guessed, suspended, threatened repeatedly with termination, framed for murder, kidnapped and shot at repeatedly. She had borne the weight of his sins and secrets as well as those of her team and a few of her superiors' that he could only guess at. She had stood between him and murderers out for his blood, crusading politicos, the law and even her friends. She had risked nearly everything to put the bad guys away, and when he had asked it of her she had risked still more. And he knew he wasn't done with the asking. If she knew what was good for her, she would throw him over before the storm sank them all.

"You know, I think you're right."

Again, his gaze moved abruptly to her, and he shook himself from the irrational notion that she might be responding to his unvoiced thoughts. She reached into her bottom left desk drawer—the bottle of tequila was long gone—and lifted out her messenger-style purse. She stood slowly as if hindered by some deep ache, clutched the long strap at midpoint with her right hand then threaded her left arm and head through the loop, slowing her movements at the last second to settle the strap gently against her right shoulder. Her hand continued to grip the thin leather lightly, thumb padding up and down against the edge as the fingertips of her left hand fluttered back and forth across the unfinished pages on her desktop.

"This will still be here tomorrow."

"As will we all, Lisbon. As will we all."

Her eyes rose to his then, and he was a little unnerved by the question he saw there. Not a question _for_ him but rather more _about_ him. The shadow was, however, a fleeting one, and he chose to let it pass. She gave him a tired, half-hearted smile and headed for the door, pausing briefly at the threshold to turn her head just enough to send her words back to him over her shoulder.

"Not too late, okay, Jane?"

"Of course."

She smirked with fatigued humor, shaking her head as she left him to his evening. He waited until he heard the ping of the elevator, faint in the distance, and then another ten seconds for good measure. Standing, he drank the last dregs of his tea, not minding the tepidness of it too much, glad that nowadays Lisbon always sprang for the quality stuff that didn't lose too much flavor with the loss of heat. His mind aswirl with thoughts of Porchetto and vodka and Red John and Grace's spectral epiphany, he moved by rote to the break room, washed out his tea cup and returned to Lisbon's office. He fluffed a pillow and leaned it on the diagonal against the arm of her couch then lay down, crooking his left arm under his head and snuggling into the softness. Legs outstretched and crossed at the ankles, he trained his eyes on the ceiling and chose one thing on which to center his thoughts. Eyes still looking upward, his right hand stole across his torso to retrieve his cell phone from his left vest pocket, cradle it against his body and wait.

Lisbon carried the weight of all things on her shoulders, much of it, _most_ of it of his manufacturing. And he _did_ feel guilty about it—he really did, but he just couldn't see any other way. As he had watched her in those silent moments, her face buried in her hands, an image had come to his mind's eye of Lisbon standing at the edge of a great precipice, looking down into a bottomless black hole, her right arm flung out to the side barring the team from coming too near, her left hand holding onto the back of his jacket keeping him from tumbling headlong over the side. And he had been struck with how small, how _slight_ she was, not originally made for such a strain. But circumstances and people had shaped and heated and pounded her into something stronger than that first-formed metal, and while he knew she was determined to see this trial in which they were bound together to the end, whatever that might be, he was just as determined that there would be more left of her than shards and fragments, that the only shattering would be on his part. She scoffed at his continued assurances that he wanted to protect her and consistently rebuffed his suggestions of deniability, but he hoped that when they came to the end, she would realize he had kept his promises. In telling her and her alone about Red John's continuing existence, he had insured that she would be safe from any consequences of his actions if she would only extend the grace to herself that she gave so abundantly to others and just _lied_. It was his hope, beyond exacting his revenge, that Lisbon, while she may not appreciate his efforts for her, would at least reward them by doing whatever she needed to do to keep herself safe when the time came. When he might not be able to . . . . . .

But that would be then, and this was now.

He figured thirty minutes would be enough. At this hour the traffic would be light and half an hour would see her home and inside the door, the locks engaged, keys and badge and gun and purse deposited on the small desk across from her front door, mail disinterestedly perused, and he would call. Tell her not to turn on the television, maybe warm some milk against the chill and to soothe her stomach and head up to bed, making sure to remind her of the advice he had given Porchetto.

_Breathe in, count one. Breathe out, count two. In, one. Out, two._

Yes. It—and they—would still be there tomorrow.

**END**


End file.
